7 ms·
If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolize
by Hfuffzehn 4mo ago
If I get it correctly I like the ruling.
So Google has established a product called Search.
For that product rules have been established.
Google has monopolized that product.
Now Google is replacing that product with a new product.
But they keep calling it the same thing.
Because they want to keep their monopoly.
That is what has been deemed illegal.
Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Search is illegal, because it breaks the rules established for Search.
But IANAL.
- brainwad 4mo agoIt has nothing to do with monopolies. Google was protected from defamation law with search because the page title and snippets were direct quotes from the linked result page. Whereas with AI overviews, the copy is written by a Google-controlled LLM.
- andai 4mo agoMaking the response consist entirely of direct quotes sounds like a better user experience than what they're doing now.
- Terr_ 4mo agoI recall "Large Libel Models" was one of the sobriquets going around. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4546063 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4546063
- smcin 4mo agoBrilliant
- Hfuffzehn 4mo agoYes, the monopoly is not relevant for the court. It is relevant for Google though, because they want to transfer it to another product. And the court is saying that whatever that new product is, Google is not allowed to mislead the public by pretending it is search.
- fauigerzigerk 4mo agoI'm not sure. Is it really just the misleading part that the court takes issue with, i.e portraying Gemini output as a search result? In my view, the ruling could mean that Gemini's output is legally seen as first-person speech by Google regardless of where it is published.
- Hfuffzehn 4mo agoSure that could be the worst case. But then we are in the case law vs. continental law debate for lawyers. When I wrote "Gemini is not illegal" it would have been more correct to say that the court has not decided about Gemini but specifically about search. And I do think it makes sense to distinguish between explicitly chatting with an LLM and entering something in the search bar people have used for decades now.
- fauigerzigerk 4mo agoI completely agree with you that this particular ruling does not make Gemini illegal in Germany. I'm just wondering whether the logic of the ruling is tied to the specific context (search results) or applied more generally to LLM generated text.
- Ekaros 4mo agoI think that will depend. If person publishes it as their own speech Google is likely not fully liable. On other hand as Google publishes it as their own speech on their own site well they are fully liable. To me it seems pretty reasonable that content Google generates with Gemini and publishes on their own google.com domain is their speech. Or at least they are fully editorially responsible.
- danaris 4mo agoBased on the article, the problem isn't that Google is attempting to present the AI Overview as "search" to the users. Google is attempting to claim to the court that AI Overviews are just like search, and the court isn't buying it. The problem here is that 1) the AI Overview is giving incorrect information, and 2) it is Google's own words ...which makes Google liable for anything false there. They weren't liable for false statements in search results, because that was 100% other people's content, being linked to, with a small blurb taken directly from their words. With the AI Overviews, regardless of whether it's getting its information from other people's content, it's remixing it based on Gemini's algorithms and synthesising statements that are frequently wrong.
- Saline9515 4mo agoIt should be noted that defamation law has a very low threshold in Germany, to the point that businesses routinely sue Google Maps users for less-than-5-stars reviews. Google had to change their display of reviews because of this. Three stars review is taken down for "libel": https://support.google.com/maps/thread/367778263/google-maps-ratings-and-reviews-becoming-increasingly-useless?hl=de https://support.google.com/maps/thread/367778263/google-maps... HNer gets a legal threat after saying that he didn't like a doctor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734895 Google maps german policy: https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/16997273?hl=en https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/1699727... Meanwhile, service in Germany is still rather poor (especially if you have children), but at least no one can complain!
- dgellow 4mo agoDamn, that makes public facing LLMs a horrible liability
- Blackthorn 4mo agoGood.
- pif 4mo agoWhich is what thay should be in any sane environments. LLMs can be wonderful tools, but they cannot be trusted.
- tempfile 4mo agoPublic-facing LLMs are a horrible liability.
- InitialLastName 4mo agoNo more of a horrible liability than a human writing public-facing copy.
- applfanboysbgon 4mo ago> HNer gets a legal threat after saying that he didn't like a doctor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734895 This post is written by an LLM, and possibly a complete fabrication.
- conartist6 4mo agoRight. If Google isn't liable for that content nobody is.
- tavavex 4mo agoThat's probably what they actually think at Google. A lot of the "they're just like people" marketing now seems like responsibility-washing. That despite Google developing the LLM and charging for its use, they treat it less like a piece of software and more like providing access to some guy's answers who has no agency and isn't owned by them. If their software ever messes up and calls you a murderer to a potential employer, or offers dangerous advice, their reaction would be "oh well, that's just too bad isn't it? Well, we wrote that the LLM may not always be right in page 683 of the service agreement, so this is not our problem."
- panarky 4mo agoSo if the actual page is defamatory then Google quoting it verbatim is protected. But if Google accurately summarizes the defamatory page, then the summary is defamatory?
- deanishe 4mo agoDid you read the article? The whole point is that these particular defamatory claims weren't made by some third-party, but hallucinated entirely by Google's own AI. There is no "accurate summary". Just a pack of lies fabricated in-house at Google.
- brainwad 4mo agoIt could presumably accurately summarise it while still sticking to reported speech. In German there is a grammatical tense that is basically only used for this; it's pops up in newspaper reporting a lot where they don't want to endorse the statements they are reporting.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoSo AI isnt just ripping off the underlying information?
- jibal 4mo agoNone of that is in the ruling.
- Hfuffzehn 4mo agohttps://the-decoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/26_O_869_26_begl_Abschrift_Urteil_v_28_05_2026_Geschwarzt_Geschwarzt_Geschwarzt.pdf https://the-decoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/26_O_869_... "Tatbestand Die Verfügungsklägerinnen begehren von der Verfügungsbeklagten die Unterlassung von Darstellungen KI-generierter Antworten in einer Suchmaschine. ... Die Verfügungsbeklagte betreibt eine Internet-Suchmaschine unter google.de in Deutschland. Dabei werden nach der Eingabe von Suchbegriffen durch eine die Suchmaschine benutzende Person auf den „Suchbefehl“ hin mithilfe bestimmter Algorithmen nach möglicher Relevanz sortierte Ergebnisse angezeigt. Zusätzlich bietet die Suchmaschine auch als unterstützende Funktion ein Suchergebnisformat an, bei dem mithilfe einer generativen künstlichen Intelligenz (im Folgenden:KI) repräsentative Ergebnisse zusammengefasst und angezeigt werden." No "Suchmaschine" + no „Suchbefehl“ -> no "Tatbestand" No "search engine" + no "search command" -> no "elements of a crime"
- brainwad 4mo ago> No "Suchmaschine" + no „Suchbefehl“ -> no "Tatbestand" I think you have misapprehended the ruling. Of course running an LLM that spits out libel is also a crime outside of search engines. It's just that _this_ crime has those elements. If Meta's LLM defamed a business, then the ruling would instead talk about Whatsapp users and chats, or whatever.
- Hfuffzehn 4mo agoI think you are misapprehending the ruling. I someone would put the libellous statement into Google Translate in English and the LLM spits out the German translation would that be a crime from Google? My point is exactly that the court has not decided more than it has decided: If it is a search in a search engine it is a crime.
- jibal 4mo ago
- crest 4mo agoThe court ruled that the AI generated content has an author/editor/publisher: Google. It also ruled that Google can be held liable. Insert pikachu face meme.
- Andrex 4mo ago[flagged]
- boringg 4mo agoI mean was google search responsible for surfacing correct answers? I am not a defend of AI but this seems like a weird piece of legislation.
- ndsipa_pomu 4mo agoNo, Google search was simply repeating quotes from other websites - those other websites would be responsible for their content. Now that Google is manufacturing answers using their own LLM, they are responsible for whatever results that produces.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- boringg 4mo agoWere the websites actually held responsible though?
- 9rx 4mo ago> Now that Google is manufacturing answers There isn't someone at a keyboard typing content. It's still just search, repeating quotes from other websites. The difference is that the algorithms have turned lossy, so the quotes are not always preserved in their original form.
- ndsipa_pomu 4mo agoObviously, I understand that and maybe you shouldn't have cut short the quote from my comment as that demonstrates exactly and precisely what is going on. i.e. > Now that Google is manufacturing answers using their own LLM To be honest, I find it somewhat rude that you select a portion of what I wrote and then criticise it.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 4mo ago
- nonethewiser 4mo agoI dont really understand your reasoning at all, nor what law it would break. What law do you think it would break? It doesnt even seem to be what the article is saying. This looks like a section 230 sort of issue. Section 230 is a US law that protects platforms like facebook, google etc. being treated as publishers because the information, presumably, is just being passed through. But Germany is saying the AI results are authored by Google.
- rtkwe 4mo agoI don't see a world where AI results aren't reasonably considered the output of the company. They're minced and sausagified regurgitations but they're not the original sources either.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoYeah, but my point is: what does that have to do with monopolies changing their services? And to continue your thought, what does that imply about copyright of training data? If Google is authoring the output it seems harder to argue they are ripping someone else off. It really seems like a tightrope to say google is publishing their own opinion but their opinion is also just someone else's work.
- rtkwe 4mo ago> Yeah, but my point is: what does that have to do with monopolies changing their services? Not much really other than it being a change of category from pure search surfacing other's speech to their crummy new chatbot input with search underneath. GP was just mistaken that this was in any way related to their quasi-monopolistic position. > If Google is authoring the output it seems harder to argue they are ripping someone else off. They still pirated a lot of the training material, it's not like they went and licensed copies of all the books they used in the inputs. Even discounting all the publicly available data on the internet and the models recreating things word for word a lot of the books etc they ingested are illegal copies. > like a tightrope to say google is publishing their own opinion but their opinion is also just someone else's work. It's a grey area for sure between remixing and blatant copying that changes depending on the precise output. But it's inarguable imo that they consumed and ingested the work of basically every digitized word humans have ever written for their own profit without an ounce of compensation for the original authors. Copyright is full of these grey lines though like fair use doctrine, it's incredibly difficult to define in a systematic way what distinguishes transformative and non transformative works for example.
- raincole 4mo agoThat's not what this article says. If you think the article mispresents the ruling, then you should point it out. You say you like the ruling then proceed to listing things that you like, but are not related to the ruling.
- stronglikedan 4mo ago> If you think the article mispresents the ruling, then you should pint it out. It seems that's exactly what they did.
- raincole 4mo agoWhere? Honestly can't find it. Or you're making a joke about my typo?